I suspect it saw enough of the tumble motor exhaust to start a quick tumble

Sorry, but that doesn't make physical sense. The BTM exhaust would have been going to the left on the screen, pushing the top of the first stage to the right. The impingement of that exhaust on the USS would have pushed the bottom of the USS to the left. The bottom of the USS went to the right. QED.

Logged

If I like something on NSF, it's probably because I know it to be accurate. Every once in a while, it's just something I agree with. Facts generally receive the former.

I've been taking notes from the briefing, since the forum seems to have been down.

Doug Cooke: How cool was Ares 1-X? It was triboelectrifying! Can't say enough about this team. Went from concept to flying in 3 years. Learned a lot just getting to this point. Vehicle flew well, and we will learn a lot from the data.

Jeff Hanley: Do not want to hear triboelectrified stuff from now on! Team is tired, but extremely satisfied. Couldn't be prouder of the teams. I was not even sure we were gonna launch because of the lightning strikes. But the team worked through that issue well to get to the launch. Very proud of the result

Bob Ess: Spectacular day. Vehicle flew better than expected. Saw the flyaway maneuver at the pad, may have looked strange, but flew perfectly - right down the line. RoCS fired only 3 times... very benign flight. Dynamics on the upper stage, working to understand that. Booster is back in the water... so the parachutes are assumed to have worked well.

Ed Mango: Fantastic day. The team really excelled. We had a great team and a great vehicle. We just had to wait for mother nature. Developmental flight stuff is a lot of fun! We had some challenges getting off the ground. It's a new rocket... it was our first time working with it. No problems with the rocket... just learning on our part. Probe cover was a bit of a challenge, but we were able to get it off. Weather didn't cooperate after that, so came back today. Lightning struck last night near pad. Worked through vehicle step-by-step to build flight rationale. That was only issue other than weather. We found a hole in the clouds, and took off through it.

Questions:

Q: Why no visual on chute deploy? With a test as smooth as this, what are your thoughts on "selling" this rocket.

A: We saw drogues come out, then lost video. SRB ships saw parachute splashdown, on their way to pick it up. We are working from Augustine report. Have been instructed to continue on current path. This test will be valuable no matter what happens in the future. We can see how valid our models were.

Q: Been 37 years since we left earth orbit. There is a push for commercial spaceflight, without background experience. This demonstration was 207th successful flight of SRB. How will you respond to Augustine report?

A: Bolden and NASA are looking at the facts from the report. We are interested in helping commercial ventures through COTS, etc. They are making progress. You are seeing experience, but also a streamlined NASA team. We are learning to do this from the beginning, since we haven't done this in a while.

Q: How successful would you classify this flight? Have you got any prelim data.

A: Completely met, and blew away our criteria for success. All onboard data systems worked well. It will take us a while to look at all the telemetry and collect data from sensors in the booster. Separation seemed different from predicted, we will need to look at that.

Q: Why are you having a difficult time selling to outsiders that you are "on-time" with this project?

A: I don't know of any data about issues like TO, didn't see any. We are keeping our heads down and pushing forward with the project. We had Orion PDR successful. And a successful 5 seg booster test. I can't speak for others. Challenged from budget perspective. Opinions of others vary, and we still need to understand Augustine report's suggestions.

A: We have been continuing with the work underway. We have been on track with development of facilities and program milestones. Opened OMC building. Continuing to make progress on Ares 1 MLP. Chute modifications. Orion PDR. DM-1 test for 5 seg booster. Pad abort test coming up.

I've been taking notes from the briefing, since the forum seems to have been down.

Doug Cooke: How cool was Ares 1-X? It was triboelectrifying! Can't say enough about this team. Went from concept to flying in 3 years. Learned a lot just getting to this point. Vehicle flew well, and we will learn a lot from the data.

Jeff Hanley: Do not want to hear triboelectrified stuff from now on! Team is tired, but extremely satisfied. Couldn't be prouder of the teams. I was not even sure we were gonna launch because of the lightning strikes. But the team worked through that issue well to get to the launch. Very proud of the result

Bob Ess: Spectacular day. Vehicle flew better than expected. Saw the flyaway maneuver at the pad, may have looked strange, but flew perfectly - right down the line. RoCS fired only 3 times... very benign flight. Dynamics on the upper stage, working to understand that. Booster is back in the water... so the parachutes are assumed to have worked well.

Ed Mango: Fantastic day. The team really excelled. We had a great team and a great vehicle. We just had to wait for mother nature. Developmental flight stuff is a lot of fun! We had some challenges getting off the ground. It's a new rocket... it was our first time working with it. No problems with the rocket... just learning on our part. Probe cover was a bit of a challenge, but we were able to get it off. Weather didn't cooperate after that, so came back today. Lightning struck last night near pad. Worked through vehicle step-by-step to build flight rationale. That was only issue other than weather. We found a hole in the clouds, and took off through it.

Questions:

Q: Why no visual on chute deploy? With a test as smooth as this, what are your thoughts on "selling" this rocket.

A: We saw drogues come out, then lost video. SRB ships saw parachute splashdown, on their way to pick it up. We are working from Augustine report. Have been instructed to continue on current path. This test will be valuable no matter what happens in the future. We can see how valid our models were.

Q: Been 37 years since we left earth orbit. There is a push for commercial spaceflight, without background experience. This demonstration was 207th successful flight of SRB. How will you respond to Augustine report?

A: Bolden and NASA are looking at the facts from the report. We are interested in helping commercial ventures through COTS, etc. They are making progress. You are seeing experience, but also a streamlined NASA team. We are learning to do this from the beginning, since we haven't done this in a while.

Q: How successful would you classify this flight? Have you got any prelim data.

A: Completely met, and blew away our criteria for success. All onboard data systems worked well. It will take us a while to look at all the telemetry and collect data from sensors in the booster. Separation seemed different from predicted, we will need to look at that.

Q: Why are you having a difficult time selling to outsiders that you are "on-time" with this project?

A: I don't know of any data about issues like TO, didn't see any. We are keeping our heads down and pushing forward with the project. We had Orion PDR successful. And a successful 5 seg booster test. I can't speak for others. Challenged from budget perspective. Opinions of others vary, and we still need to understand Augustine report's suggestions.

Q: Why are you having a difficult time selling to outsiders that you are "on-time" with this project?

A: I don't know of any data about issues like TO, didn't see any. We are keeping our heads down and pushing forward with the project. We had Orion PDR successful. And a successful 5 seg booster test. I can't speak for others. Challenged from budget perspective. Opinions of others vary, and we still need to understand Augustine report's suggestions.

A: Vindication doesn't describe it well. It is more a sense of validation of our course of action. Shows the "flyability" of this design. Performance was very pleasing... incredibly satisfying for the team. Ares 1 guidance algorithms flew the vehicle and returned the booster.

A: Very few problems encountered up until yesterday with all the little things like weather. Need to look at data for the flight. Looked just like our plans, but more spectacular.

Q: ChrisG!: The probe cover... would it have hindered the flight had it not come off?

A: We figured we should pull as much as we could before trying anyting else. We have simulated flying with the cover on. When it happened we knew what to expect. Can't say whether we would have flown or not, though.

A: Hard to tell. We need to look at the data. We know the booster sep motors fired as planned, but don't know if any other conditions affected it. It was interesting, though.

Q: Did you ever want to shake your fist at the weather gods?

A: I wish Kathy Winters was here. She did a tremendous job searching for the right conditions to launch. We would have liked more chances, but I was happy that we didn't go yesterday, since we would have lost it in the clouds.

Sorry if this was already covered in thread, still catching up. The NASA TV feed (over satellite) had trouble right after separation, for about 20 seconds. I'll be checking my recordings to see what the deal was, but there was definitely a problem there. Internet may have been fine, but cable would definitely have seen the problem.

For the record, the NASA TV outage was indeed 20 seconds long. On the two SD feeds, the bug (logo in upper right corner) persisted, which implies a camera or master control problem. On the HD feed, the bug disappeared, which implies a master control or distribution problem.

Therefore, I think NASA TV's master control crashed at this point, and I'm glad it waited until sep to do so!

Glad to see that NSF is back up ChrisB, you should have posted something to your Twitter account about the NSF outage ...

I'm not even gonna cover the question about the additional plume and such.

Q: How significant was roll torque?

A: We saw roll control do 3 firings today. Sims showed 20-25 times fired. Much less than expected. It is another data point showing that this roll torque is very small. Flight tests like this help reduce uncertainties.